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Smoking begins early. A survey in 2000 found that a quarter of teenagershad smoked before, and more than 1 in 10had smoked in the past month. Telling your children not to smoke doesn’t work. So what does?

Talk to your kids about the health risks of nicotine before addictions take over!

1. Talk to your kids before they are teenagers! It turns out that if you haven’t already started smoking by age 18, you’re not really going to start. Smokers tend to start young, so it’s important to get them to hear the message early. So talk to your kids about the effects of smoking before they are teenagers!

2. Nagging is not a communication strategy Parent-child talks are more effective when you invite your children to participate in a two-way conversation and when you use a tone that shows that you care.

3. Speak the same language as your kids Not every teenager cares about the long-term effects of smoking (lung cancer, head and neck cancer, heart attacks, stroke). They may not care about the effects of secondhand smoke.

Such facts don’t work as well as telling teenagers about wrinkly skin and yellow teeth, which result from tobacco use. Here’s a fact sheet that’s been designed for teens. 4. Be supportiveTeenage brains are more susceptible to becoming dependent on nicotine than those of adults. You can have a more meaningful conversation with your teenager if you can stay away from sounding judgemental, accusatory, or condescending.

5. Using peer pressure to your advantage A recent study found peer pressure works both ways. But it’s more common for smoking teenagers to introduce their non-smoking peers to tobacco than the other way around. Non-smoking teenagers are relatively less successful at dissuading peers from smoking.

It might be because teenagers lack knowledge about the more effective ways to quit tobacco. Do you have The Knowledge? (Here are more resources for teenagers).

6. How to be cool (but not smoke) Or it may be that peer pressure works because smoking is seen as being cool. Consumer research show that being cool is about breaking rules which are seen as unfair or unnecessary, while not breaking legitimate rules.

So that means campaigns will be effective if they educate teenagers that they can choose to stop smoking. And that’s what the research says: A 1999 study showed that teenagers, who made an independent decision not to smoke, reduced their smoking in subsequent months.

7. Beware the effect film noir has on your kidsMovies which glamourize smoking may have an unintended effect on you and your family.

In a recent study, young adults were more likely to endorse alcohol use after watching movie clips where alcohol was portrayed in a good rather than bad light, even though alcohol consumption was not the main theme of any of the movies watched. This likely applies to tobacco as well.

8. Children who stay in school longer are less likely to smokeIt’s been known for a while that there are fewer smokers among those with more years of education. A 2014 study found that those who smoked at age 16 were more likely to be smokers as adults and less likely to have a university degree.

But having better problem-solving abilities does not explain this trend. Rather, family factors are likely to be responsible. Teenagers who feel connected to their parents and are monitored by their parents are less likely to smoke.

9. Do what you preachChildren learn by example. Those with parents who smoke are 3 times more likely to smoke. A 2006 study conducted in New Zealand found that parental smoking was responsible for an estimated 40% of teenagers who smoked.

It appears that we currently lack information about the effects of medications and dosage recommendations which are appropriate for women (see this recent report from HealthDay News). But there are many other aspects of women’s mental and physical health for which much information is available, but for which awareness is often lacking. With International Women’s Day just a day away, we propose four things you can do to get up to speed this weekend:

1. Build your professional and social network

Research supports the role of a social network for mental wellbeing at the workplace and at home. The New Zealand Chamber of Commerce has an “Inspiring Change – International Women’s Day 2014” breakfast networking event aimed at inspiring personal and career growth held at Raffles Hotel on Monday, 10 March 2014, while the Singapore Committee for UN Women has a “I am fabulous and I inspire change” cocktail networking event at the Grand Park Orchard on March 6th. Those seeking inspiration can join a sharing session with Dr Aline Wong as part of the “Be inspired, create positive change” campaign by WINGS.

All this might be a bit much for the person who doesn’t really like talking to strangers. Joining an interest group like the Nature Society will open doors to opportunities for making new friends. Gym membership, signing up for a language, dance, painting, or pottery class, and volunteering with animal shelters will also offer more opportunities to meet like-minded individuals. Here’s a list to help you get started (Expat Living also has suggestions).

2. Make time for yourself

Self-care is the fancy way of saying that we need to look after ourselves in order to stay psychologically healthy. This includes the running, dog walking, park connector cycling, spinning, kick-boxing, trampolining, healthy eating, and spa-pampering that we do every week. It is the mindfulness that everyone’s thinking about these days (“How to fight stress? It’s all in the mind“, Straits Times, 3 March 2014). It’s also the family meals and kite-flying picnics that we’ve been having with our loved ones.

And if you’re not been doing any of these, there’s no time like the present. The iLight festival at Marina Bay (Timeout has the scoop) starts this Friday 7 March 2014, while the Mosaic Music Festival celebrates its 10th year, running for a fortnight at the Esplanade starting 7 March 2014. Looking forward, Shylock, Portia and other Venetians transform Fort Canning for its annual picnic event in April: Shakepeare in the Park.

Clawing back time from work responsibilities may however be a job of its own—it may be time to put your assertiveness skills to the test. Learning to say no is a skill that takes practice. In the meantime, some girlie and parentinglife hacks may come in useful. So are these useful links, particularly if you’re new to Singapore.

Someone who collapses after running a marathon almost always seems to be a man (e.g., 2XU Compression Run). At least that’s what we get from the news. But statistics show that “women are just as prone to heart disease” as men (Straits Times, 7 May 2013; read this article by the Singapore Heart Foundation). Furthermore, women who experience high levels of stress are reported to be particularly vulnerable. Breast and colorectal cancers are among the top cancers for women in Singapore (based on figures from the Singapore Cancer Registry) but there is evidence to suggest that these and diabetes are preventable with fruits, veggies, whole grains, and an active lifestyle.

Newspaper reports about men with depression appear more often than those about women with depression, potentially fueling our use of the availability heuristic. As a result, we may think that depressive illnesses are more frequent in men than women. In fact, it is the opposite (here’s why); moreover, it’s widely acknowledged that mental illnesses affect women differently from men (the US National Institutes of Health has useful fact sheets).